Microsoft 365 Updates for the Week of April 21st.
Hello WolfPack. This week, Microsoft has announced some new and improved tools for managing SharePoint and Teams meetings. There is also a new update for how co-authoring works in Word online.
Updated: Streamlining the recipient experience for links shared with “specific people”
Users can choose to share documents in SharePoint or OneDrive with specific people. The resulting link provides access only to those people they specify, although other people may already have access. If someone forwards the sharing invitation, only those who already have access to the item will be able to use the link to access the document.
After this update is available in your tenant, when users in your organization receive a “specific people” link to files or folders on OneDrive or SharePoint they will no longer be presented with a page directing them to click “Next” to sign in.
With this change, only guest users will see this screen
Users in an organization may still see a page asking to enter an email address when they receive a link that has been shared “specific people” when it works for more than one person. This is an example:
In this scenario, users in an organization will enter their email-address and click Next. They will then be directed to the Azure AD sign-in where they will enter their sign-in credentials if they are not already signed-in to another Microsoft 365 service. They will not see a screen in the middle asking them to click Next to sign-in.
This update does not change experience for users outside an organization who do not have a guest account in the directory. They will continue to get a simple one-time passcode experience which they can use to access shared content without requiring them to sign-up for an account.
Teams updates to provide enhanced meeting and administration controls, and security enhancements
Microsoft is releasing new updates to provide additional controls on how Teams meetings re accessed and experienced as well as additional administration and security enhancements:
- Update default policy to enforce the lobby in meetings. Due in mid-April
- Previous controls
New policy controls
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- Assign a policy package to a batch of Teams users. Due in mid-April
- With batch policy package assignment, Teams admins can us the "New-CsBatchPolicyPackageAssignmentOperation" cmdlet to submit a batch of users and the policy package that they want assigned to the group.
- They can use the "Get-CsBatchPolicyAssignmentOperation" cmdlet to track the progress and status of the assignments in a batch. The assignments are processed as a background operation and an operation ID is generated for each batch.
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- Control profile picture settings in Teams. Due in mid-April
- Set a default policy for “Who can present” in Teams meetings. Due in early May
Who can present
Change in meeting join experience. Due at the end of April
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Users who don't have a meeting creation policy assigned will see a pre-join screen indicating that the meeting hasn't started. These individuals will be automatically admitted into the meeting once a user with proper permissions joins and starts the meeting.
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Users who have both meeting creation and meeting chat policies set as disabled can't start a scheduled meeting and can't chat before or after the meeting. Once the meeting has started, the user will be allowed to join and chat in the meeting.
Providing privacy for participants who call in to a meeting via PSTN. Due in early May
The phone digits of dial in users will be masked
New Feature: Global reader experience in SharePoint admin center
Microsoft is introducing a new role named Global Reader. You can consider this role as a companion role to the Global Admin role. Here are the circumstances for using this new role:
- Assign the global reader role instead of the global admin role to users who need to view all your organization’s settings but not edit them. For example, to plan, audit, or investigate.
- Use the global reader role in combination with other limited admin roles like the SharePoint admin role to allow specialists to perform admin tasks.
New Feature: New rich-text editor for text fields with SharePoint lists
Users can enable the RTE on any multi-line field. Once the user enables RTE, the Notes field will display a pencil icon in the list form. Click the pencil to edit text and adjust appearance, such as font, size, color, highlight, bold, italics, underline, and bulleted or numbered lists.
Targeted release customers can expect a gradual rollout from mid-April to the beginning of May.
Standard release customers can expect to see this feature in mid-May to mid-August.
Awareness of Microsoft 365 Temporary Feature Adjustment - Update:
OneDrive
- Customers who use OneDrive Files On-Demand and choose to "display items by using large thumbnails" in Windows Explorer or Mac Finder will see generic icons instead of thumbnails for a subset of file types, such as PDF and video files. Photo file thumbnails (jpeg, jpg, png, etc) are not affected by this change.
SharePoint
- Updated (in bold) to provide additional clarity: Microsoft is rescheduling specific backend operations to regional evening and weekend business hours. Impacted capabilities include migration, DLP, apps that scan the service, and delays in file management after uploading a new file, video or image.
Previously announced:
OneNote
- OneNote in Teams will be read-only for commercial and education tenants. To edit, please use OneNote for the web or the OneNote desktop app.
- Download size and sync frequency of file attachments has been changed.
- You can find details on these and other OneNote related updates as http://aka.ms/notesupdates
SharePoint
- We are rescheduling specific backend operations to regional evening and weekend business hours. Impacted capabilities include migration, DLP and delays in file management after uploading a new file, video or image.
- Reduced video resolution for playback videos.
- The following blog is now available with some additional information about these temporary changes: Awareness of temporary adjustments in SharePoint Online
Teams
- Frequency of Presence checking.
- Interval we show when the other party is typing.
- Reduced video resolution.
Stream
- People timeline has been disabled for newly uploaded videos. Pre-existing videos will not be impacted.
- Meeting recording video resolution adjusted to 720p
New feature: Review mode in Word for the Web prevents unintended edits
End users will soon be able to share Word for the web documents in Review mode, which limits recipients to adding comments or leaving tracked changes in the document.
When people share documents with Open in review mode only selected, recipients who open the document in Word for the web will be limited to adding comments or leaving tracked changes in the document. This can help prevent unintended edits to the document.
People who open the document in the Word desktop app instead of on the web will only be able to view the document. They’ll see a notification to switch to Word for the web if they want to make changes.
With this feature, file owners can have more control over new edits, and only file owners can accept or reject changes made by other people. If someone else leaves suggestions in the document, they’ll be able to reject their own changes but can’t accept or reject someone else’s changes.
New Feature: Yammer app for Microsoft Teams
The new Yammer App for Microsoft Teams brings a fully interactive Yammer experience into the hub for teamwork, helping your users stay connected to what’s happening across the organization.
After users install the app, it will appear in the navigation left rail in Microsoft Teams. They will be able to join community discussions, share announcements, attend live events, and connect with coworkers similar how they interact in the Yammer web or mobile apps. It’s Yammer, but inside Teams.
This differs from the current Yammer Tab experience in Teams, which ties Yammer to a specific channel using a tab.